Dhanush’s Why this kolaveri di is on its way to attaining cult status in the online world

Southern star Dhanush is perhaps the first Indian celebrity whose song Why this kolaveri di has gone viral on YouTube with over 20 million hits so far. But the song is yet to make it as big as international hits Baby ft. Ludacris, On The Floor ft. Pitbull and Bad Romance. Nevertheless, Dhanush, son-in-law of matinee idol Rajinikanth, is overjoyed that the song is successfully “breaking language barrier”. “Yayyyyyy 20 million views for Kolaveri !! Pa pa papa pa pa papa!! God bless,” Dhanush posted on micro-blogging site Twitter.

The video for Kolaveri di was released on YouTube November 16. It’s peppy, catchy tune as well as funky lyrics, helped it go viral on the Internet, and get more than a million hits on the website within a day of its release. The numbers are only multiplying ever since, and have reached 20,341,650 hits by Monday noon. The song, composed by 18-year-old Anirudh Ravichander, will be a part of the film 3, directed by Dhanush’s wife Aishwarya. Also called Soup song, it has been appreciated by people of all age groups and lauded by celebrities, including megastar Amitabh Bachchan. However, lyricist-writer Javed Akhtar had spoken out against it, saying: “Tune ordinary, singing substandard. Words an insult to sensibility.” But Dhanush is nonchalant and tweeted: “I have you guys. Your support. As long as I’m making u guys happy, I’m doing my job as an entertainer properly. That’s enough. God bless.”

The Tamil-English song is also a hit with north Indians, despite its southern accent-loaded vocals. “When a song is breaking language barrier and brings us together, how does it matter which language it’s in? You want a name to this language? It’s an Indian song made by an Indian…Whether its a sensible song or nonsense song, it’s music. It’s art. Art does not know language. Only people’s heart. And that’s where my song lives.” “And to all my north Indian Kolaveri fans, thanks for receiving a Tamil song with warm heart and making it a global song. God bless,” added Dhanush.

Ever since it has hit the web, there have been several spin-offs of the song, including one by Bollywood playback singer Sonu Niigaam’s son Nevaan and the Chamaat song on Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar being slapped. Then there are the Gujarati, Marathi and Sindhi versions of the song as well.

The version of Why this kolaveri di by Sonu Niigaam’s son has crossed one million online hits

Dhanush’s Why this kolaveri di now can easily be awarded the song of the year. Sonu Niigaam’s son Nevaan joined Kolaveri di’s brigade recently and called his version the ‘Milk song’ as against the ‘Soup song’ of Dhanush. Nevaan has recorded the version in a very sweet way and generated over one million views in just three days! Dhanush, the original singer-lyricist of Kolaveri appreciated the little singer and wants to meet him. When Sonu read this, he tweeted, “Thank u @dhanush ji… He loved the song that we thought we should do this for him… And now he thinks you’ll meet him More Power!” On this, Dhanush tweeted back, that Nevaan was a ‘rockstar’ and he would love to meet him and also make a video with him. Kolaveri di has become popular in a very short period and received close to 20 million hits in a week on YouTube, while Nevaan’s version has garnered one million views in less than a week. Now let’s see if the ‘milk’ version breaks the records of the original ‘soup’ song!